Sunday, July 8, 2018

The adage that “a lie
can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its shoes
on” has been proven in India once again as social
media rumours about child-lifting have led to 27 incidents of
mob-lynching across nine states of India. They can hardly be pinned down to
local issues as the attacks have occurred in states as far apart geographically
as Tripura, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. About a year ago,
rumours of braid-chopping had spread from Nagaur in Rajasthan, travelling
across the North through Uttar Pradesh and Delhi to Jammu and Kashmir. Then
they suddenly died out just as the rumours about child-lifters may do.

The rapidity with
which the rumours were disseminated and the readiness with which people were
willing to act on them point to high public anxiety levels. Such a volatile public
mood in the run-up to the impending general election suggests nightmarish
scenarios. An anxious polity is a fair game for demagogues who can play on its
uncertainties, biases and prejudices to capture political power.

Rumours have always
come in handy for canny political forces. They are efficient instruments to
channel an anarchic public mood to further their political agendas. They also
have the added advantage of being nearly untraceable.

Social networking
platforms are available on every other mobile, offering anonymity to agent
provocateurs like never before. Research in the United States shows that a
false story or a “fake news” report took roughly 10 hours to reach 1,500
Twitter users compared to the 60 hours for a factual story. The influence of a
rumour is directly linked to how far and quickly it spreads.

Yet, one must not
confuse the medium for the message. Under criticism, the government has
asked social media platforms to monitor their content and
states have been directed to check mob lynching. But social
media platforms are only instruments for spreading messages. The
problem is the message itself.

When the political
party in power at the Centre encourages the use of social media to spread
fractious ideas, what can state governments do? Days after his Cabinet
colleague Sushma Swaraj was viciously trolled on social media, Prime Minister
Narendra Modi praised it fulsomely, crediting it with “democratising” public
discourse and described it as “endearing”. There was not one word of caution
about its misuse.

Everyone is aware of the paid trolls that target people
critical of the Prime Minister or his party. They exist because they have their
political uses. Under these circumstances, one has to be very very afraid of
the possible political consequences of rumours in an election year

No one knows for sure
who begins the rumours which start communal riots -- rumours about conspiracies
of an impending attack by one religious community on the other, or the
desecration of holy books and icons, mosques, churches and temples and so on.
However, everybody has a fair idea of who benefits in a surcharged communal
atmosphere and the aftermath of violence. No one knows who
started the ‘love jihad’ rumours or the rumour of sexual harassment that
triggered the deadly

Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013. However, everyone knows
that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) benefited electorally from the riots and
that some of the riot-accused became members of Parliament and even ministers.

No one knows for sure
who was behind the rumour that the unfortunate Akhlaq’s family had slaughtered
a cow in Dadri, but everyone knows that the local BJP MP and Union minister,
Mahesh Sharma, turned up to pay homage to one of the murder accused who died in
jail. Press photos showed the murder accused’s body wrapped in the national
flag as the minister stood before it in reverence.

Similarly, no one
knows who started the rumour that Alimuddin Ansari, a coal trader in Jharkhand,
was transporting beef, resulting in his lynching by a mob of cow vigilantes.
However, everyone has seen the video footage of Union Minister Jayant Sinha
garlanding the eight accused convicted of the murder when they secured bail.
Politicians will not pay homage to murderers or honour them unless they
benefited from their action or supported it.

This has been
witnessed in riots across the country whether they are in Gujarat, Uttar
Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh or Maharashtra. Asghar Ali Engineer’s studies provide
ample evidence of this as do reports of various commissions of inquiries. No
one knows who triggers the rumours leading to communal violence but the Hindu
right-wing moves in to reap the benefits electorally.

Since the Narendra Modi government came into power in 2014,
India has witnessed much more starkly than ever before how rumours can be used
to channelise public anxiety and anger against imaginary threats and enemies --
beef eaters, leather workers, cattle traders, Christian missionaries,
kurta-pyjama and skull-cap wearing students of madrasahs and ‘anti-nationals’
or ‘Urban Naxalites’ those who question state policy.

What the child-lifter
and braid-cutting rumours indicate is that there is a social eagerness to
believe rumours because of high levels of anxiety prevailing in contemporary
Indian society. The sources of such anxiety are many -- youngsters are anxious
about jobs which are non-existent; farmers are caught in a cycle of debt;
unorganised workers who lost their jobs during demonetisation are still in a
state of shock and unemployment; the minorities feel that they are being
relegated as second-class citizens and even the majority which should have been
confident in its sheer number, the Hindus, feels that it is threatened by a
demographic transition which could reduce them to a minority.

The ‘Pathalgadi’
(literally, inscribed in stone) movement shows that tribals whose land and
forests are being taken over by industry feel so helpless that they think that
stone inscriptions claiming sovereignty will keep them safe. Others who are
equally naïve support the Maoists who take up guns on their behalf. These are
all signs of an anxious and helpless population. The uncertainty in their lives
is not becoming less with time. In fact, their social, economic, political and
even religious insecurities have tended to increase.

Politicians in
democratic societies pry on these insecurities. They can be been used
intentionally during election campaigns to influence voters. When much is at
stake politically, rumours to exacerbate the voters’ insecurities can become a
means to tangible electoral gains. Rumours have become a
weapon in the armoury of powerful political parties in India because while they
can exacerbate social anxieties, they also offer easy electoral ‘solutions’.
The intentional use of rumours helps political parties to extend their
influence beyond the converted, by creating a large penumbra of the susceptible
around their core support base. These are the ambivalent voters, anxious and
uncertain, and waiting to be herded.

The deliberate use of
rumours allows those seeking public office to follow a dual strategy. An overt
strategy that allows them to occupy the high moral ground promising
development, employment, higher incomes, honesty and accountability in
governance, and selfless public service above individual gain – ‘achche din’ in
short. However, the use of rumours also allows for a covert political strategy
-- one of attacking rivals by sullying their reputation or consolidating and
expanding their voter base by generating fear and hatred among communities.

While one allows them
to pose as change agents – knights on white chargers, as it were, the other
permits them to make allegations that would not stand legal scrutiny but damage
the reputation of their challengers and rivals by creating doubts in the public
mind about their suitability for public office. The covert political strategy
using rumours can also be used to vitiate the political atmosphere without
taking responsibility but enjoying the fallout. This is most evident in those
rumours that divide a wedge between communities – e. g. between Hindus and
Muslims and between natives and outsiders. A criminal act or a perceived
misdemeanour by an individual is projected as aggression by an entire community
or a group to justify retaliation.

The unquestioned
master of the dark art of perception management has been the Hindu right-wing
in India. Their prime target has been secularism and liberalism. They see the
Congress and the Nehru-Gandhi family as the prime culprits for promoting such
values and therefore their private and public lives are routinely painted black
and horrendous allegations levied against them. They also use rumours to target
the minorities, especially Muslims. Social media networks have allowed them as
never before to weaponise ordinary folk into deadly mobs willing to do what may
be individually unthinkable.

These mobs have become
weapons of social destruction --identifying a ‘public enemy’ and prompting
people to cast aside logic, reason, and compassion in favour of violence; to
deliver retribution and justice. Vigilante delivery of summary justice suits
the masters of the rumours. They can manage and harvest public anger for
political purposes while continuing to play innocent. What’s more, they can
even deliver pious sermons about why the public should not take the law into
their own hands while reaping the political benefits of mob action.